Inevitable

A pair of beautiful aspen trees has presided over our back courtyard for years, shading us from the west and providing a much needed vertical view over all our flat, low house lines. 

This year one of them is dying. The one on the left barely leafed out this year, and when it finally did, quite late, the leaves opened yellow, curled and distressed.

It's what aspens do. They don't live long in an urban setting. 

Even a mature, stately pair like this that had looked so healthy and glorious last year, will go. I lost two last year and there are stumps of aspens in the ground here that were cut down before we moved in.

This pair are not our trees, they are over the fence and in our neighbor's yard. But the borrowed view is such a critical element of my own back yard that it will be a big loss to my garden.

My narrow back garden is completely walled in, surrounded on all sides by the low lines of the neighbor's houses and our garage and house. It creates a long unbroken horizontal perspective from every angle, every way you turn.  

Thankfully the big aspens stand tall and break up the horizontal monotony. Their leaves quake and glitter, raising your eye. They are shady in summer, golden in fall. 

They are not mine, but they are a focal point of my garden. I will be sad when the sick one is cut down.

Fortunately I have a pair of aspen clumps in my yard too, at the far end of our narrow lot, that shade our deck and red chairs. 

Ours are smaller than the neighbor's pair. Maybe they were put in at a later date and are younger? So far the two by our deck are healthy. 

We have an arborist fertilize ours each year and inject iron chelate (aspens get chlorosis from inability to use the iron in the soil here). We had a tree guy prune out dead branches this spring. I want to baby these remaining aspens as long as possible to delay the inevitable.

But the inevitable will come.

And when it does, what will I do for shade and vertical interest? I have a crabapple in the center of the back yard, just planted and only five feet tall and still shaggy, but someday it will serve to raise the view and give shade. Some day.

It won't have the graceful stature of the tall aspens, though. Those are a real loss when they go.